hunger

The eight-minute film "Man in a Maze" opens with an aerial view of fresh produce being dumped into a landfill at the Mexico-U.S. border, and ends with an aerial view of a community garden.

A congressional stalwart against hunger, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, was named as ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture subcommittee on nutrition.

The mosquito nets distributed in Africa to combat malaria are being used "from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique" as fishing nets, says the New York Times...

Up to 1 million people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone could be "food insecure" by March because of disruptions to farming and marketing due to the Ebola virus, say two UN agencies, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The outbreak of Ebola infections in western Africa is disrupting food production so that hundreds of thousands of people will face hunger in coming months, says The Atlantic.

The antihunger Food Research and Action Center says recent declines in the number of children in the school lunch program is due to demographics and not changes in the menus to cut down on fat, salt and sugar.

The largest U.S. hunger-relief charity, Feeding America, says two out of five client households "have at least one member that has worked full-time but still utilize charitable food programs to make ends meet."

The partisan split between rural and urban America jeopardizes the future of the panoramic bills that meld farm supports, rural economic development, public nutrition and global food security programs into a single bill, says former agriculture secretary Dan Glickman.

Rampant hunger is appearing in Liberia, one of the west African nations hit by ebola, says Mother Jones magazine. It cites a spot check by Mercy Corps, a charity, of three parts of the country heavily affected by the disease.

A sizable portion of Americans are familiar with hunger, according to a poll commissioned by the antihunger group Food Research and Action Center.

Voters respond strongly to issues such as food safety or assuring that children, veterans and the elderly have enough to eat, said pollster Celinda Lake.

Some 805 million people suffer from hunger around the world, or one in nine of the earth's population, but the total is down by 100 million people in the past decade and by 200 million since 1990-92, says the United Nations. With the reduction, the world is within reach of the goal of cutting in half the hunger rate in developing nations by 2015 "if appropriate and immediate efforts are stepped up," says the UN report State of Food Insecurity in the World.

Participants in the Women, Infants and Children food program face notably higher prices at small grocery stores than at supermarkets, says a study by USDA and UC-Davis. Researchers looked at prices charged by retailers in California from 2009-12. A package of milk, eggs, cheese and peanut butter or beans was likely to cost $20.05 at a store with one or two registers while it would be $12.95 at a store with at least 10 check-out lanes.

Family farms account for 500 million of the estimated 570 million farms in the world, says Insights magazine, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a think tank. "Farming is one of the last economic activities performed largely by families working together." On average, family farms are smaller than nonfamily farms - 475 million farms are less than 2 hectares, or 5 acres. In developing countries, the farms are heavily diversified as a way to protect the family against losses rather than try to maximize profits. Many family and smallholder farmers are poor and work off the farm too.

An estimated 14.3 percent of American households, or one out of seven, often had trouble buying enough food or affording enough nutritious food last year, said the Agriculture Department. The "food insecurity" figure was almost the same as in 2012 but has declined from 14.9 percent in 2011. Rates surged during the 2008-09 recession and remain high.

Food prices are rising and supplies are short in the three west African nations affected by the outbreak of the Ebola virus and the harvest season is imperiled by labor shortages due to restrictions on travel, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in a special alert. FAO reported "panic buying, food shortages and significant food price hikes on some commodities, especially in urban centers." With harvest-time near for rice and corn, travel restriction "will seriously impact farm production," said the alert.

House Budget chairman Paul Ryan "outlined a plan to combat poverty on Thursday that would consolidate a dozen programs into a single 'Opportunity Grant' that largely shifts antipoverty efforts from the federal government to the states," said the New York Times.

Two-thirds of the cropland in the Gaza Strip has been damaged by shelling, razing, and vehicle traffic since armed conflict began a year ago in the territory, said two UN agencies. The escalating agricultural damage exacerbated a food shortage, said the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN Satellite Center.